Near as I can tell, we are all going to die a slow incomprehensible radioactive death relatively soon now. Or we're not.
Reports are flooding in from around the world that the Fukushima meltdown was one of the worst disasters in mankind's short history, a game-changing horror of unimaginable scope and psychological timbre that will wreak emotional and environmental havoc for years, decades and even millennia to come, spreading radioactive particles over thousands of square miles of Japan and beyond.
What's more, none of that is really true, the disaster isn't really all that bad, the radiation levels are relatively low and Japan is feeling much better already, thanks for asking.
The Fukushima meltdown is easily as terrible as 1979's Three Mile Island, which, it turns out, wasn't all that bad, depending on who you don't care enough to ask. Fukushima is probably the second worst disaster of its kind in history, even though no one really knows how to measure the full extent of these things so that's probably false as well, although we do know it's not as bad as Chernobyl because nothing could ever really be that devastating ever again, except for the fact that it totally could.
What are you doing about all of it? Word has it if you're not popping iodine pills and seaweed and -- oh yes -- also stocking up on handguns, canned ravioli and a month's worth of fresh water for the next big quake, well, you clearly didn't read Jim Berkland's warnings, that old rogue USGS scientist who said the Japan quake was just the beginning, was merely the trigger for a huge chain reaction blasting through the Ring of Fire, and various forces both tidal and lunar are right now colliding and colluding to slam the living hell out of Northern California. Are you prepared?
You'd better be. Jim says a massive, devastating quake could quite nearly wipe us out, and he predicts it's almost certainly coming -- whoops, oh dear -- last week, right around the time of the supermoon, which was also supposed to trigger all sorts of ungodly global crisis but turned out to be nothing more than a nice time to gaze upwards and howl and then sip some wine and have sex. Oh well.
Whom do you want to believe? What vague and indeterminate misinformation do you want to poison your heart like the waves and specks of deadly low-level radiation currently not heading out way over 6,000 miles of ocean in the form of mist and seagulls and furious dolphins, soiled Toyota Corollas and shrill Fox News idiocy that makes you embarrassed to be alive in the modern world?
This just in: We are very much in serious danger, but the liberal media and various sinister governments are covering it all up to prevent an all-out panic. Unless we're not, and they aren't, because that would be completely stupid, and also impossible.
Does the truth actually matter? ...
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Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the SF Chronicle and SFGate. Get it at Amazon and beyond. He recently wrote a fine thank-you note to Charlie Sheen, a piece about cultivating
your own private Wisconsin, and a column wondering why you always walk in circles. His website is markmorford.com. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...